Best SEO Plugin for WordPress: The Hunt is On — What are Your Options?

Plugins are like genies; they make it all happen for WordPress. For WordPress-based websites, blogs, and magazines, the plugins extend so much functionality that you’ll really have to work hard not to find a plugin for something you want your blog to have, or to do. Since SEO is usually a priority for most bloggers what do you think the best SEO plugin for WordPress is?

Let’s explore some of our options for the best SEO Plugin for WordPress. We’ll begin with the two plugins we have installed on this very blog.

Yoast SEO Plugin

Built by Joost De Valk, Yoast, the WordPress SEO plugin is one of the sleekest SEO plugin we’ve come across at a budget that’s just right – free. The beauty with this plugin is that it does more than just help you optimize title and description of your pages. In fact, the Yoast plugin isn’t just one plugin – it’s almost a complete ecosystem of plugins all working together to help your WordPress blog emerge from the depths of Google’s dense Search Results Pages (SERPs). If I never came across the next plugin below, I wouldn’t hesitate to declare this the best seo plugin for wordpress… ever.

Without getting too in depth, here are just some of the features of the Yoast WordPress SEO plugin worth mentioning:

advanced control over your permalinks structure

add breadcrumbs to enhance inner linking

add content to your rss feed so that you get credit and a backlink from those who syndicate your content

XML sitemap generation without needing a separate plugin

There are many other features. Just hop over to the plugin website to get a more in depth view.

Just before I hop on to the next plugin, there’s one more feature I’d like to mention – on page post optimization.

Once you install the plugin, as you’re writing your posts, you’ll see a live “analysis” of your post. Check this out:

The green yeses is a quick way see that you’re on track. And for those of us who are too lazy to optimize our posts, a glaring red no is just to hard to ignore.

Easy WP SEO

Okay, next up is the Easy WP SEO plugin. It’s an extraordinary plugin that works with you – while you write and when you are ready to publish the post – on a multitude of parameters. I really like how it gives you an SEO Score. Which gives you a quick way to gauge how you’re going with your content. Here’s what I see write now as I’m writing this post.

While it gives you a simple score, there are a lot of factors that work together to get to the number. The one thing that differentiates the Easy WP plugin from others – and the reason why I list it as the best SEO plugin for WordPress – is because it’s almost like a live SEO expert pushing you to bring out the most optimized post while you work to upload or write the post. And all at a very affordable price – $37, at the time of writing. And this is a one time cost.

I can go on and on about this plugin, but here’s just a quick summary of what I like about it:

As mentioned before, the SEO score and that nice tingly feeling you get when it turns green.

The ability to optimize for two keyword phrases – primary and secondary.

It will even underline, bold and italicize your keyword automatically.

A quick analysis of what you’re doing right and what you’re forgetting.

Readibility test, though I tend to constantly fail at this one.

If you have a ghostwriter writing your posts for you, Easy WP SEO even have an in built integration with your Copyscape account, so you can quickly see if you’re being burnt with plagiarized content.

The fact the it analyzes the whole page that your post is on and not just the post content itself. This is much more realistic.

Though there’s a lot more to this plugin, I will leave it up to the developer himself to tell you about it.

All-In-One SEO Pack

While this one is an old-timer, it’s certainly no laggard. It powers many WordPress blogs and has been a long associate for SEO hungry bloggers for a respectable amount of time given that there are so many more plugins for SEO. If I don’t push it too hard, I could peg this up and probably name it as one of the best SEO plugin, ever. It’s free, simple to use, and very effective.

The first thing All-In-SEO forces you to do is to change the Meta information on your blog. For instance, instead of showing Meta title ( the title that search engines see, and the one that shows up on your browser bar) as:

Blog Name | Whatever title you gave your blog (I Hope you do have a title for your blog)

All-In-One-SEO changes it to

Keyword Rich Title For your Blog ( which describes what your blog is about) in less than 40-60 characters | Blog Name

Setting Home Page Title

Setting Overall Blog SEO

You’ll see tons of easy options for you to work with, but most importantly: define Meta information for every page or post you publish. Apart from the normal title (for readers), specify a custom title for SEO, a description, and relevant keywords.

Custom SEO for every Post

HeadSpace

Another one of those old boys on the SEO street and probably another strong contender for the best SEO plugin pedestal, Headspace is one robust SEO plugin with the best documentation, if you ask me. It’s a powerful plugin that works magic on your blog. Covering everything from on-page SEO, individual page modules, posts, author pages, taxonomies, categories, archives, and even 404 pages – it’s a mean beast that powers your SEO effortlessly.

Each of these plugins is a world for you to explore. You won’t know what works for you unless you try, but as far as I know, these plugins are the very best. Do you use another plugin that’s doing wonders for you? Share what you think is the best seo plugin for wordpress by commenting below.